DJ Shadow was fortunate to come around when he did. He has talent and vision, to be sure, but the fact the he was on the forefront of instrumental hip hop when he released Endtroducing… in 1996 has given him leeway with listeners that other artists don’t have. I honestly couldn’t tell you what I would think about an album like The Less You Know, The Better if I didn’t know who made it, other than it’s all over the map. Since I have a long history of listening to Shadow, I give him the benefit of the doubt and try to see where he’s taking us and what he’s trying to do with all the different genres at play here.

With all the singles, EPs, remixes, collaborations, and live albums he’s done, it’s hard to believe that TLYKTB is only his fourth studio album, and his first since 2006’s The Outsider. While that album was inspired by the hyphy movement happening in the Bay Area, there isn’t one particular thing drawing all of the tracks together on this album. He opens things with “Back To Front (Circular Logic),” an intrumental hip hop track that plays with loops and layers that could be at home on anything he’s done. However, the next track is the heavy metal-inspired “Border Crossing,” driven by distorted guitar sounds and double bass drums. Then it’s right back to the classic hip hop on “Stay the Course,” which features Posdnous and Talib Kweli rhyming over funky drums and smooth bass line. In a way, it feels like the gimme track to appease the fans who won’t be ready to go on the rest of the musical journey, but I’ll be damned if I don’t enjoy it. He doesn’t spoon feed us much longer, anyway, with “I’ve Been Trying” venturing into ‘70s singer-songwriter territory, with acoustic guitar and flute in the forefront, but with some subtle scratching in the background. We stay on this vibe for “Sad and Lonely,” but this time it’s a sparse piano ballad with female vocals. We get some early ‘80s goth rock courtesy of Tom Vek on “Warning Call.” For the next few tracks there’s plenty of what I’ll refer to here as “Shadow Classic,” before reaching “Run For Your Life,” which features a Primus-like bass line playing against some ‘70s afro-funk. The stand-alone strangest song on the album comes in “Give Me Back the Night,” which features a simple John Carpenter-sounding bass line with eerie keyboards serving as background from a creepy monologue that devolves into madness. It’s very effective in it’s darkness, and it’s definitely a track that will stick with you. “Scale it Back” uses Swedish band Little Dragon to hearken back to the smooth R&B of the early ‘90s. To close out the album, he calls back to the melancholy of earlier on the album with “(Not So) Sad and Lonely,” which takes the piano line of “Sad and Lonely,” adds strings and guitar, pushes vocals into the background, and adds some bass to give it warmth. It’s like taking a music class and having the instructor demonstrating how instrumentation and arrangement can change the overall feeling of a song.

While TLYKTB is a peculiar album, there is certainly a lot to like about it. While the style choices from song to song are strange and might throw some people off, because he’s DJ Shadow, many will take a chance on music they might not listen to otherwise. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the album the first time I listened to it, but I have to say that it’s grown on me exponentially since then. It’s tough to say where this will stack up against the rest of his discography years from now, but for right now, I’m enjoying it.